Current research indicates that over 150 million people in the United States read magazines and nearly the same amount read newspapers there. All told, these Americans presently spend about the same amount of money on magazines and newspapers as they do on movies and video games. While overall media consumption continues to grow briskly in the United States, however, readership of newspapers and magazines has shown a continued decline as consumers increasingly migrate to more on-demand, mobile and interactive options to suit their hectic lifestyles. Similar market trends have been identified in other countries and markets throughout the world, with electronic media consumption steadily displacing consumption of traditional print media.
Another identifiable trend is the growth in mobile entertainment services and technologies that enable consumers to tap into large blocks of their day to multi-task. The average person spends many minutes per day commuting alone in their car, exercising at a gym, waiting in line, or traveling. For example, consumer technologies and services that enable consumers to download music onto their cell phones and then play back that music have shown significant growth over the last few years and are projected to continue that growth. Additionally, the recent growth of podcasting indicates that consumers are continuing their search for new forms of innovative mobile entertainment. It is estimated that more than 6 million Americans have listened to podcasts, which are recorded audio files of broadcasts, radio shows, interviews, and the like, via either computer download or mobile digital music (e.g., MP3 and other digital audio format) players.
While there currently is an extremely high volume of digital print content (such as made available by various news agencies or publishers), there currently is no high-volume and high-quality platforms that enable such publishers to convert such content for audio consumption. Most publishers simply are not capable of, or otherwise have not demonstrated the technical expertise, resources, or desire to build the infrastructure for creating, storing and distributing such audio content at a large enough scale to be profitable. It would be advantageous if traditional publishers could be provided with a system that may be managed by a third-party which enables them to leverage their existing content and format to reach new customers as digital audio content suitable for mobile delivery and/or consumption.
Conventional wisdom is that consumer interest in portable music and podcasting downloading services will continue to fuel the growth of mobile media and entertainment purchases by consumers. The challenge thus remains, not only to develop new content suitable for mobile entertainment, but also to develop new mechanisms for delivering that content to mobile consumers. While portable digital media players are capable of storing hundreds of hours of audio files and video files, it is nonetheless necessary for the user of the mobile device to “synchronize” the device periodically in order to download new material. Typically, this synchronization includes attaching the digital media player to a personal computer, and then downloading content from that computer (or the Internet) to the digital media player. Typically, this process requires the user to connect to their computer physically in this manner whenever they want new content. Thus, current digital media players do not provide true on-the-go and on-demand access to various types of media content.
While it is estimated that there are over 200 million existing wireless telephone service subscribers in the United States, only a small minority of those subscribers currently utilize services offered by their mobile telephone service provider for digital entertainment media. While certain mobile telephones may allow users to download music and other pre-recorded audio content or video content to their telephone for simultaneous or later playback, for example, such devices are only currently a small percentage of those in service. These service offerings by wireless telephone service providers, therefore, have only a small sub-population of potential consumers. Further, the currently provided content has not tapped into the large stores of digital content that are available via other sources, such as the Internet. While many wireless customers may be interested in service offerings relating to portable entertainment, they may not have the desire to invest in a new telephone or change their current service plan to support data transmission in order to gain this capability.
Thus, there remains a need in the art for systems for providing mobile audio content delivery services to the large body of potential consumers that utilize mobile telephones. Particularly, such systems should enable the linking of wireless carriers, content providers, and consumers in a manner that permits a high volume of mobile-capable audio content to be developed and delivered to a high volume of consumers with low implementation barriers to consumers. Additionally, there is also a need for such mobile audio content delivery systems to be able to provide a delivery of digital entertainment and other (e.g., business, education, reference, etc.) media on-demand to various consumers regardless of the type of mobile telephone device that they have.